Penny Pritzker, the billionaire Hyatt Hotel heiress and accomplished real estate developer, in June became President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Commerce. During a break Monday at the North American Competitiveness & Innovation Conference she talked with U-T San Diego. That discussion has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Question: What are you hearing from CEOs about taking the North American Free Trade Agreement to the next level?

Answer: Today is about how do we strengthen the North American platform; how do we build on the success of NAFTA. We have $1.1 trillion of trade annually; 460 million people in this marketplace. Our goal is economic growth and job creation.

Q: How does immigration fit into that paradigm?

A: In the Senate immigration reform bill, which the administration supports, there’s a combination of things. Obviously, border security, and a path to citizenship for those who are undocumented at this time. But what’s also included is a great expansion of our H1B visa program; family reunification, which allows people to work together; there is stapling a green card to a Master’s or a Ph.D. if you get that here in the United States in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. All of these are business generators.

The studies have shown that $1.4 trillion of economic growth would be associated with passing immigration reform over the next 20 years. What we know about our immigrants is they form businesses. They tend to form small businesses. I think 30 percent of new businesses in the U.S. are formed by immigrants. So there’s an enormous opportunity with immigration reform, and it’s got terrific positive economic outcomes associated with it, as well as supporting additional skilled labor, etc.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: We're asking for a source on Pritzker's estimate that immigrants form 30 percent of new U.S. business. Other estimates put this figure at 15 percent or so.)

Related

Q: What are you hearing from organized labor about the Senate immigration bill?

A: That would be more of a question for the White House in terms of where labor is. My job has been to really do outreach to business community about immigration reform. I went on a listening tour; during my first 100 days I was in 13 cities in about six or seven weeks, had 22 roundtables, met with over 350 business leaders. There was almost uniform support for the immigration reform.

Q: What are your priorities to improve North American economic integration?

A: Foreign direct investment ... we have companies that invest in all three countries, and we want to encourage companies to continue that; regulatory cooperation ... goods, as they move back and forth across the border, sometimes three or four times, there’s not a regulatory impediment to that; infrastructure ... we need to invest in the entry points, expanding them; tourism ... making that easier, what are the impediments; innovation ... how do we collectively help our entrepreneurs?

Q: What are you telling the president about corporate taxation?

A: I’m 100 percent in favor of the president’s goal to move forward corporate tax reform. And he and I had that conversation as recently as a week ago. I think it’s very much important for American competitiveness.

The president has proposed that in corporate tax reform that there will be a one-time revenue that will occur; that we use that to fund the going-forward infrastructure needs of the country at large, including the border, which is obviously a big issue.